In recent weeks, the White House has shifted on a dramatization of the Russian threat on Ukraine, going up to an “imminent” invasion. But the accusations have not always been shown by evidence.
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See you later, tomorrow, in a few weeks or never. This is today the flexible position of the White House on the threat of a Russian military operation in Ukraine. For nearly three months, with regular leaks in the press and public statements, Washington has continued to sound the alert on the preparations.
On February 2, the administration reported that it would no longer use the word “imminent” to qualify this danger. “I think it sent a message that we did not intend to send, explained the Jen Psaki spokesman, the one we knew that Putin had made his decision.” This sudden semantic correction, which responded To some irritation of the Ukrainian authorities, does not change the US two-lane strategy, adopted since early November 2021.
The first is to prepare upstream of strong economic sanctions, in consultation with the allies, to hit Russia if his tanks crossed the border, a very probable hypothesis according to many experts. The second, unusual and delicate, is an aggressive communication on intentions, not just acts, from Russia. A kind of preventive denunciation for the good cause – Avoid a war – but also arouses questions about this supposed exercise of transparency. Does the United States do not give way to misinformation, lack of advanced evidence, in order to disrupt the own calculations of Moscow?
The obvious must be recalled. Russia has, alone, has a safe crisis in Europe by massaging more than 120,000 soldiers along the Ukrainian border. This time, no illegally or denied special operation (as in 2014), but a way to negotiate by bullying, by plating its interlocutor.
Moscow proposes to solve this same crisis by posing conditions impossible to satisfy NATO and the United States. The Kremlin knows that no Western country will sacrifice a single Defense soldier of Kiev. Already, Vladimir Putin is at the center of the game and identifies the opposing vulnerabilities. The stakes seem gigantic, even beyond the integrity of a country and continental security.
The mirror of Russian methods
On February 7, Joe Biden prompted US nationals present in Ukraine to leave the country. It would be “wise”, felt the president, who repeated this alert in an interview at the NBC, Thursday. “Things could quickly get carried away,” he said. Is it the trauma of Afghanistan’s chaotic evacuation that motivates these remarks? In reality, this American dramatization is a constant political choice, made from the beginning of November, 2021, to behind the scenes of the reserves in Europe, and sometimes imposing a strange mirror effect, compared to the Russian methods already proven.
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